


Linger

by Lochinvar



Series: The Song of Wandering Aengus [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Avalon - Freeform, Boys In Love, Brotherly Affection, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Curtain Fic, Dean Deserves to be Happy, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester Cuddling, Fluff, Gen, Happy Dean, Happy Sam, Heaven, Holding Hands, M/M, Nice John Winchester, POV Third Person, Peace, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Deserves to be Happy, The World's Longest Vacation, Wincest if you squint, happy ever after, king arthur - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 19:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6533008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/pseuds/Lochinvar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Be still,” says Sam.</p><p>They play this game every day.</p><p>-----</p><p>[Added November 6, 2016]</p><p>There are mythological havens for heroes, better suited for our boys than the Heaven portrayed in the series. Valhalla comes to mind and the Elysian Fields. And, spurred by the idiotic statements the British Men of Letters make regarding warding the Blessed Isles against the supernatural, the Western lands. Where those boats sail at the end of Lord of the Rings, Excalibur, and every other story about Arthur, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Linger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirigibleboyking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleboyking/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the house at the end of the world](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6197668) by [dirigibleboyking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleboyking/pseuds/dirigibleboyking). 



> My take on a typical day (where time is an illusion). Just a quick prose poem in honor of the orchards of Avalon, fueled by an ongoing desire to lock the series writers in a room and forced them to read. And learn a few new tricks.

“Be still,” says Sam.

They play this game every day.

His older brother, in old jeans and an older t-shirt, their father’s leather jacket rolled up under his head, laces his fingers over his heart, opens his eyes, and looks up at the jigsawed pieces of a blue sky glowing through the fresh leaves of an early spring apple orchard. The boys are bedded down on a thick turf of grass and sweet woodruff and violets. 

“Is this Heaven?” asks Dean.

“No,” says Sam. “And it isn’t Dyersville, Iowa.” 

A flock of snowy cumuli pecks its way across the sky towards the fast-climbing sun. Stray arrows of silvery light illuminate the grove of trees. 

“It’s morning,” says Dean.

He hears robins in the distance, greeting each other like longtime employees opening up the small town diner where they have worked together for years: unlocking the doors, switching on the lights, making the first of many pots of coffee, and turning on the grill.  
  
Dean thinks of the thousand towns where he and Sam took turns, slipping out of bed to drowse outside those thousand diners, waiting for them to open. Standing in line for fresh coffee, an orange, and a slice of day-old pie to bring back to the motel room. To wake the brother who had taken the brunt of the slashing claw, the poisoned fang, the bone knife, the drop from the fire escape, the broken window that left blades of glass in a cheek or hand. Who earned the bigger share of the painkillers. And the extra hour of sleep.

A fragrant fog of corn pollen and mowed sweet prairie grass engulfs the orchard and moves on.

“Is this Kansas?” Dean asks.

“Not Springfield, Kansas, not Springfield, Nebraska, not Springfield, Illinois,” says Sam. He smiles at the sky. 

Sam brushes an imaginary leaf from his older brother’s cheek, which is kissed with freckles. Yesterday they swam in a quarry where white marble for churches and banks and courthouses was scored and cut, once upon a time. Dean’s skin still feels tender from a day in the sun.

“Dorset, Vermont,” says Dean. 

Was there a beach last week, he thinks? Sand and sea otters and a green sea dark as midnight.

“Maine,” says Dean, with authority. “Washington?” with less certainty.

“Dean, be still,” says Sam, with fond impatience. He is humoring his brother, you can tell.

In the distance, a tune dawdles, slipping sweetly from a flute. 

“Gotcha,” says Dean. “Springfield, New Mexico. The Trickster.”

The music fades, replaced by the intricate embroidery of a Spanish guitar. The music is like birdsong. It comes and goes. Each verse calls out to someone, somewhere, then fades away. Dean knows another song will take its place. Something with strings. Something stirred by breath and heartbeat.

Sure enough, he hears a meadowlark and the soft coo of a mourning dove. A murder of crows argues over a cache of early peas climbing against the outer wall of an orphaned shed.

The sounds drift in and around them, butterfly-soft, then the melodies float away on invisible wings. A chickadee scolds from a branch directly above the two men, heralding to the World and the Master Cartographer that Here Be Hunters.

Dean is barefoot, a cherished gift he has not enjoyed since his last childhood summer in Lawrence. Hunters need boots, with steel toes, to smash in doors and break the bones of sorry humans possessed by creatures that steal their faces and grin through spasming flesh. 

But a boy can go barefoot. Dig heel and toe into grass and dirt and sand.

The brothers reach out and take Time, laying It down on the dappled grass. They take Their Time.

Without looking, Dean unknots his fingers and reaches over to where Sam is resting, their shoulders almost touching. He pulls Sam into the solid curve of his body and laces his right hand through Sam’s left, then places them both back over his heart. Sam’s small sigh of contentment escapes and puffs against Dean’s ear.

Sam wears an ancient, green plaid flannel shirt and a favorite pair of work pants. The shirt belongs to John. Mary would steal it for working in their garden on crisp early summer mornings, when the sun wakes up cold and white.

After a daybreak snack of buttered toast with Mary’s homemade raspberry jam, John sits at the old wooden kitchen table in the backyard, drinking black-hearted coffee, cleaning his favorite tools, and watching his beautiful wife plant, hoe, and weed. Mary would drown in the shirt’s broad shoulders and long torso, really too big even for John. She neatly folds the sleeves into thick cuffs above her elbows. When she kneels in the Lawrence loam, the shirt blankets her. John pretends his arms are in the sleeves around her.

Mary’s favorite fragrance is lily of the valley. She uses a drop of its aromatic oil on her hairbrush and a few drops more in her bath. Her scent floats in the brushed warp and weft of the shirt’s soft fabric. The brothers breathe it in and out together.

Sam borrowed the shirt a while back. He intends to return it, someday.

Sam’s hair hangs loose below his shoulders, shot with red and gold. Clean and shiny and a storm around his head. He looks like something wild come to visit. The fox that tiptoes to the back door for a forbidden bowl of leftovers during a deadly winter when almost everything dies. The blue jay that steals peanuts from a bowl left on the porch while Grandpa goes inside for a glass of lemonade. The bull elk that stalks through the farmyard, knowing to the minute the timetable for hunting season. The young wolf that curls in the arms of the young hunter, seeking solace in the last summer before they are called to be enemies. They will be reunited, one day, under the same trees where the brothers rest.

Sam and Dean are awake, but there is no place they need to be. They linger. The sun climbs. The sky melts into a deep iridescence well of opal and aquamarine. Dean is sure if he squints he will see Castiel, sitting at an alabaster desk, eating, with eyes shut, a heavenly cheeseburger.

If Dean were a baby he would be playing with his toes, but instead he holds his brother steady with one arm and rubs the thick pad of the Mount of Venus on Sam’s hand with his thumb beneath the steeple of their twined fingers. There is no need to nap, so they keep playing the game.

“Beautiful sky,” says Dean. “Gunnison, Colorado? Sheridan, Wyoming?” 

Sam laughs.

“You know better,” he says. He shifts and twists to sink in deeper against his older brother’s broad chest.

The hands of the clock of the world move, one silent click at a time. The blossoms above the brothers have opened, pink and white. Bees visit, strumming the air, and the petals begin to fall. Fruits swell. Apples, of course. Red and gold and lemon, emerald and silver, striped and spotted and marbled.

Hoof beats in the distance; the measured cadence of a synchronized charge. A rocking horse rhythm. Not a battle, just practice on a field of gold. A bugle’s melancholy voice disappears into a night breeze.

Dean is no longer restless. He looks up and studies the canopy of leaves and fruit. The colors are deepening, and in the distance, one silver planet shines above the edge of the western mountains. A copper sunset fades to black. The Milky Way blazes overhead, cobblestoned with stars.

There is no need to dream, since all of their dreams have come true.

“A good day,” says Sam.

The orchards of Avalon shelter them through the night.  
  
###

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Own nothing; rely on the kindness of strangers.
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated - thank you.
> 
> Mild edit on August 23, 2016
> 
> Mild edit November 12, 2016
> 
> Mild Edit December 2, 2017


End file.
